Thomas H. Ruger

Thomas Howard Ruger (2 April 1833-3 June 1907) was Governor of Georgia in 1868, succeeding Charles J. Jenkins and preceding Rufus Bullock. During the American Civil War, he served in the US Army as a Major-General.

Biography
Thomas Howard Ruger was born in Lima, New York on 2 April 1833, and he moved to Wisconsin in 1846. In 1854, he graduated from West Point, only to resign from the US Army in 1855 to become a lawyer. In June 1861, he became a Lieutenant-Colonel in a Wisconsin volunteer regiment at the start of the American Civil War. Ruger was wounded at the Battle of Antietam in 1862, but he became a Brigadier-General and fought at Chancellorsville and the decisive Battle of Gettysburg in 1863 before being sent to put down the New York draft riots. From June 1865 to June 1866, Ruger was in command of the North Carolina Department of the US Army, and he was appointed military governor of Georgia in 1868 during Reconstruction. From 1871 to 1876, he was the Superintendent of West Point, and he led the Department of the South from 1876 to 1878. Ruger would serve in various positions in the American West into the 1890s, and he led the Department of Dakota during the Crow War of 1887. He retired in 1897 with the rank of Major-General, and he died in Stamford, Connecticut in 1907 at the age of 74.